Barclays in talks with US credit card company

Britain's third largest bank, Barclays, is thought to be near to closing a deal to purchase Providian Financial, the US credit card company, in a deal which could be worth $4bn (€3.15bn).

San Francisco-based Providian is one of the 10 biggest credit card lenders in the US.

Interim results in August showed that Barclaycard's operating profits had jumped by 22% and is one of the bank's strongest growth areas.

Last year Barclays' chief Matt Barett made his expansion plans for Barclaycard known saying that he wanted to expand overseas business from 1.4 million customers to nine million.